Personal care products are available in a wide variety of packages, including bottles, jars, tubes, and cans. However, there are relatively few personal care products on the market that include built-in applicators wherein a personal care product (e.g., liquid make-up) flows through the applicator to an applicator surface. Some products on the market, such as certain deodorants, employ a roller-ball applicator technique to deliver product. But other personal care products such as cosmetics foundations and lotions are traditionally dispensed out of a container into the hand, a sponge, or some other stand-alone applicator and then applied to the desired bodily surface. Such application methods may be unsanitary, wasteful, and/or messy, and may lead to undesirable post-application cleaning (e.g., hand washing or applicator rinsing).
Conventional applicators are typically not suitable for desirably applying personal care compositions such as cosmetic foundations or lotions to the entire face or other bodily surface. For example, at least some conventional applicators have a relatively wide applicator surface suitable for applying a composition onto the larger areas of the face such as the cheeks and forehead, but not onto smaller skin areas such as the area between the lips and nose. The applicator surface of a conventional applicator is typically not configured to enable a user to change the shape of the applicator surface and facilitate application of the personal care product to the “hard-to-reach” areas of the face and/or other portions of the body.
Further, the applicator surface of a conventional applicator is typically fixed. That is, the position of the applicator surface relative to the rest of the applicator is not intended to be changed. This is problematic because the difference in facial features from one user to another may cause varying pressure to be applied to portions of the applicator surface as it moves across the skin, which in turn may result in the uneven distribution of the composition to the target surface.
Another drawback of conventional applicators is that they are typically configured to apply only a single composition such as, for example, makeup or skin care product, or perform only a single task. Certain features of the applicator surface such as smoothness, roughness, hardness, softness, rigidity, flexibility, effusivity, abrasiveness, tackiness, etc. are tailored to facilitate the application of the single composition or performance of the single task. Prior to the application of a personal care composition (e.g., liquid foundation) to a bodily surface such as the face, is not uncommon for a user to first clean the surface where the composition is to be applied. The user's cleaning regimen may include, for example, scrubbing and/or exfoliating the target skin area to provide a smooth, clean surface for makeup application. It is well known that cleaning and/or exfoliating the skin typically involves the use of a utensil and/or composition that interacts abrasively with the skin surface. For example, some users may use a wet washcloth in combination with a mildly abrasive skin cleanser to provide the desired cleaning experience. But when applying the personal care composition, at least some users desire an applicator with a smooth surface, which may provide a comfortable feeling against the skin and/or may provide the perception of a more even application of the personal care composition. Thus, there is a need for a single utensil that can apply more than one composition and perform more than one task, for example, a utensil that can prepare a target area for application of a composition and then apply the composition.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a cosmetic applicator that delivers more than one composition to a target surface and can perform two or more different functions. It would further be desirable to provide an applicator that can apply a composition to a surface that includes a variety of surface features. It would also be desirable to provide a cosmetic applicator that includes a surface capable of changing its position relative to one or more other portions of the applicator.